EPS drying tips?

10-04-2012, 03:27 PM

Ok I can do basic board repairs. As long as its not fin boxes, but fixing Firewire boards seem so hard mostly due to the EPS foam sucking up water like a sponge. I have dried my board for two weeks, used napkins and gravity to suck up the moisture and put my board next to a dehumidifier, and the foam still has some moisture in it. Any advice please???

How much moisture? If it is not making any difference to the board's original weight then buoyancy will be unaffected. It supposed to be bad to leave water in an EPS blank because it can travel with heat through the void between the foam cells and spread and then with heat added it apparently break down cell membranes and then penetrate the foam cells. Still think that would be large amounts of water, if you've left it for 2 weeks to dry out you've probably done nearly all you can do. A few molecules here and there I don't think will do any damage.

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Well its for the most part dry, but when I put the solarez in the hole, small bobbles of moisture was popping up. Dont think that was the epoxy reaction because it was in the shade when it was doing that. Going to give it a few more days, then try again!

I use a "protimeter" moisture detector as part of my job and have found this to be the ducks nuts when assessing whether a board is dry enough to repair, probably a bit expensive to buy as a one off ($500 app) but just checked out ebay and saw some very cheap(other brand) ones, whether they work or not....

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Thanks for the tips guys! I put the board next to a dehumidifier for several hours and the foam felt very dry. Feeling confident, I poured in the solar rez and right on cue, little bubbles came out of the ding. I officially give up and took the board to a professional ding repair shop to let them deal with it!! The wonders of EPS foam! I have never had this much problems with regular poly foam blanks!!!

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For the price they cost, the company should use the same EPS than tufflite, which is doesn´t suck water, if it does it will some amount of water. But the final result is there nothing like a Firewireboard under the feet.